Many listeners regard practitioners of Hindustani music as spiritually inclined individuals, who are always immersed in their pursuit of perfection through music. Indeed, this may be true of some musicians, and yet not entirely so. For professional musicians as with others, it has always been necessary to keep abreast with happenings in the real world and to not remain detached from the present. Their music, therefore, reflects not only an aesthetic paradigm, but also a response to musical and extra-musical happenings around them. It is for the listeners to decode this in the absence of any overt explanation by the musicians of the creative process that they are involved in.
But it is equally important to note the manner in which musicians choose to articulate their concerns in response to specific questions put to them or when they opt to pen their thoughts.
Recording technology made it possible for us to document interviews of well-known musicians of the twentieth century. These interviews are vital sources of information for any scholar, musician or student, who wishes to study the life and work of those musicians, their perspective on Hindustani music history and the immediate situation, their thoughts on ancestors and contemporaries, and more. Much of this comes to the fore through anecdotal references, metaphors and similies, but it is for us to decipher the multi-layered world of the Hindustani musician through this material, which is at times amorphous and on other occasions direct and almost proclamatory.
Over the next few weeks, this column will discuss interviews that feature maestros from the past. To begin with, here is an interview with the Agra gharana maestro, Faiyaz Khan (1881-1950), disciple of his maternal grandfather Ghulam Abbas Khan and the latter’s brother Kallan Khan.
Ustad Faiyaz Khan in conversation with Farhat Said Khan
According to the description accompanying the link, the interview was conducted by Farhat Said Khan, President of the Sadarang Music Conference (Calcutta) and this has apparently been confirmed by his son as well. However, one of the responses to this track mentions that this was probably an interview conducted for Akashvani, Lucknow, by SK Chaubey, a disciple of Faiyaz Khan and a commentator on the state of Hindustani music during the 1940s. In fact, the criticism of the general music conference environment recorded by the interviewer in the introductory portion is similar to the views expressed by Chaubey in his book entitled Indian Music Today (Kitab Mahal, Allahabad,1945).
The identity of the interviewer aside, the conversation is significant on several counts. It documents Faiyaz Khan’s position on the kind of music he considers aesthetically pleasing and the fact that he rejects excessive taans or swift melodic passages that disturb the grammar and raagrang or the mood/colour of the raag. In particular, he is critical of singers from the Punjab school for their display of speed. However, he compliments the quality of their voices. He recounts his family tradition that dates back several centuries.
Notably, Faiyaz Khan mentions that in the past, only those belonging to hereditary vocalist families could sing and that instrumentalists like sarangi and tabla players were not allowed to do so. This demonstrates the hierarchies that existed in the social organisation of the musician community, even if they came from a common religious background, unlike the general belief that the community was a monolithic entity.
Faiyaz Khan speaks of the importance of precise intonation and faithfulness to the lyrical content. He brushes aside any effort at downplaying forms like thumri and dadra.
Evidently, the interviewer is at ease in the presence of the maestro and can therefore coax out answers. Many of the questions are leading and are proof of the fact that the interviewer is well acquainted with Faiyaz Khan’s views on various matters related to music-making. To some, the interviewer’s decision to sing in Faiyaz Khan's presence would seem audacious, but it was probably a ruse to provoke the maestro into singing for this session.